Pynchon’s New Nature: The Uncertainty Principle and Indeterminacy in The Crying of Lot 49

•pynchon's New Nature: The UncertaintyPrinciple and Indeterminacy in The Crying ofLot 49 Lance Olsen Pynchon·s penchant for science-particularly for the science of physicsiscommon knowl~dge and commonplace. He employs science as ametaphor. aguiding schema for his art. anesthetic model representing the phenomenal and spiritual worlds. For Wittgenstein. of whom Pynchon makes multiple mention in V..1 "Die ½tellis£alles. 1ras der Fallisl.··and for Pvnchon the case is primarily one of disorder. heat-death. white noise. commu~ication collapse and existential blur. In criticism concerning Pynchon·s use of science as metaphor. one most often finds discussed the concept of entropy. in which nature. according to the second law of thermodynamics. willreach a state of maximum disorganization and minimum available energy. at which time all change will cease. 2 Entropy is most often spoken about with respect to Pynchon·s early stories and V. The next most commonly discussed scientific notion is that of white noise and distortion in information systems.3 This appears in relation to all of Pvnchon·s work. Then comes ··MaxwelrsDemon." the ideaof nineteenth-cent~ry physicist James Clerk Maxwell. 1,vho posed the existenceof a small intelligent being who can sort out swifter and slower ~oleculesin a box divided into two compartments. thereby creating an inequality in energy (heat) without the expenditure of work.4 One usually finds "Maxwelrs Demon .. mentioned with respect to The C1yingof Lot .f.9. Ve:Y little criticism has been devoted to Pynchon·s use of relativity theory. ~htch emphasizes the subjectivity of the observer. and it appears most often Inconjunctionwith Grm·i[_r sRainbo\\'.~ Canadian Re\'iew of American Studie,;. Volume 1--1-. Number 2. Summer 1983.153-63 154 Lance O!serr Anne Mangel rightly concludes that Pynchon, by using these conceptsas guiding metaphors in his work ... radically separates himself from earlie twentieth century writers. like Yeats. Eliot. and Joyce.... The complex syrn~ bolic structures they created to encircle chaotic experience often resulted in the kinds of static. closed systems Pynchon is so wary of' Ip. 99l. Literature for us-even the seemingly oblique literature of a Yeats.Eliot or Joyceis in some way an attempt to filter disordered reality into ordered realitv. In the end the dense and intricate structures at work in Modernist write~ can be filtered into a comprehensible system. Pynchon's Post-Modernist impulse is the exact re\·erse. His understanding and use of the New Physics 1although to some extent \\.Titerslike Eliot and even Joyce were familiarwith such ideas) underlines the radical distinction between his fictional universe and that of the Modernists. He revels in ultimate confusion and indeterminacv. In this essay I should like to add yet a fifth idea from science that go~s toward shaping the overall structure and the very narrative texture of The Crying of Lor49 and. most likely. the whole of Pynchon's output. The concept of uncertainty or indeterminacy in physics has been discussed with respect to Pynchon only in relation to Grm·icy·s Rainbow. wherein he explicitly refers to Heisenberg·s Uncertainty Principle." Consequently. I should first like to review in brief the concept of uncertainty in the historyof ph:sics I though here I should like to point out that though I suggest. along with~lax Jammer. that there is a certain shadow of continuity concerning the·-···· idea of indeterminacy. I most emphatically do not mean to underestimate the profound discord generated between the old and newphysics in the ear1y part of this century by the discovery of the Uncertainty Principle). and second todemonstrate how the idea of indeterminacy functions asone ofthe most important guiding metaphors in Pynchon·s second nm·el. Although the idea of indeterminacy or uncertainty often appears in physics. it has never been precisely defined. Instead. it has at least three different though related denotations: first. acausal beha\'ior of physical processes; second. the unpredictable behavior of such processes: third. the essential imprecision of measurement procedures. The idea of uncertainty in atomic physics is not by any means a newone. In fact. itstretches back ro the beginnings of Western civilization.The earliest known thesis of··uncertaintv. which bears some sli!.!htresemblance to that foundin the NewPhysics...